WooCommerce essentials: why use it & what to include

Apr 7
02:00

2022

Maria Kharlantseva

Maria Kharlantseva

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With so many e-commerce building solutions around, it's hard to choose one that fits your specific business needs. Learn why WooCommerce is so popular among developers and companies and see how it makes the e-commerce platforms impeccable.

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Most of today's websites run on WordPress,WooCommerce essentials: why use it & what to include Articles and e-commerce platforms are not an exception. Still, for the excellent functioning of an e-commerce store, WordPress needed to be altered, inventing new assets. And now, we have WooCommerce that serves as a WordPress e-commerce building platform.

Essentially, WooCommerce is an open-source plugin of WordPress that facilitates and helps supervise the processes of e-commerce. It allows retailers to sell their products online, simplifying the payment procedure and providing an impeccable experience to their customers. The WooCommerce plugin has a vast number of pre-built functions - starting from customizable themes to helpful e-commerce features and tools. And that is not the only reason why WooCommerce is so popular:

  • It is free

WooCommerce is completely free to download and set up. Although there are some paid features and solutions, it allows you to experiment with free ones and get an understanding of what you need before paying for the desired extensions. Thus, it is a perfect decision for those who are on a budget.

  • It provides easy configuration

WooCommerce is a plugin, which means it is easy to configure because you install it like any other plugin. Of course, it requires some basic knowledge to deal with specific issues like security and hosting, but in general, it will not be a problem because of the numerous guides and how-tos provided.

  • It is flexible

WooCommerce provides the ability to sell any type of product – be it a physical product or goods or a digital solution. There are no strict limits to that. Also, it is flexible in terms of customization. That means that you can create your style and apply it to the website without facing problems and restrictions. Thus, you get an exclusive design with a strong focus on excellent functionality provided by WooCommerce.

  • It has numerous product options

For an e-commerce website, it’s critical to showcase the product so that consumers want to buy it. And WooCommerce plugin is the best tool to achieve that. It provides a staggering number of product listings, categories, and ads, supporting any type of visual, including VR/AR. Also, it has a comprehensible inventory management system to control the stock.

  • It supports various shipping options

The same as product options, WooCommerce provides an excellent shipping management system. With WooCommerce, you can add international shipping or tracking shipping or even combine several of them to make your e-commerce website an outstanding service provider.

  • It provides in-built tracking

Statistics are important, especially for e-commerce websites. It helps develop or alter the marketing strategy according to the analysis of the results, escaping relying on hypothetical data. WooCommerce allows retailers to track their performances, create charts and datasheets without referring to third-party platforms.

  • It has a solid support system

Even if you’re new to e-commerce, you can easily manage WooCommerce, because it provides support to its clients, helping them manage the process. The support team assists in setting up plugins and extensions, customization, etc. What is more, it has an extensive FAQs section where you can get an answer to any question.

All in all, everything you may need to start an e-commerce store is there at WooCommerce. Still, for a successful performance, you need to know some essentials. Each online store should feature several pages that are integral. Hopefully, WooCommerce has them within a basic package. So, what are WooCommerce pages? 

Generally, these are the pages WooCommerce generates automatically when its client installs the plugin. Without these default pages, an online store won’t function. It includes a shop page, cart page, checkout page, and account page.

Shop page

The shop page showcases all the products of an online store. It allows customers to view all the product listings at once. Depending on the theme of the e-commerce website, it may contain some other elements like a sidebar with the widgets.

Cart page

The cart page is aimed to collect the desired products and display details of an order. This is also where a consumer can set the quantity of the products and see the total price. In other words, the cart page lists everything the consumer added and gives an ability for the user to make changes, delete products or add. Also, it can show the estimated shipping cost so that the consumer sees the final costs without adhering to other pages. Shown cost of taxes and shipping at this stage helps significantly decrease abandonments because everything is clear before the checkout process.

Checkout page

As for the checkout page, it is the last step before the purchase. It is where the consumer enters payment data and other details like country, address, or email. For the checkout process to be smooth, it’s necessary to design a checkout page to be comprehensive and easy to fill out. If there are too many queries, consumers can leave it one step away from the purchase. And you don’t want that to happen. Thus, make sure to employ a simple layout and readable fonts so that users can easily fill it out and send their information to the engine without having to go without numerous obstacles.

Account page

On the account page, users see all the data of their profile and the history of orders. That can help make purchases quicker and easier because users don't need to search through the shop listings but press on the desired product from the history. The account page is also where the shoppers can edit the account details or change a shipping address.

Ultimately, you need to provide links to these pages in a menu on the homepage or in another visible place so that the consumers can easily access them with just one click. Although these pages appear in Your Pages when you install the plugin, you still need to set them in WooCommerce options. That ensures you know exactly what they refer to and what type of content they include. To make that, you need to go to the WooCommerce settings and choose the product tab. Here you can choose what page will be a shop page and what will be a cart page.